Monday, March 18, 2013

Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance On DVD From Virgil Films & Entertainment, May 14

Virgil Films &
Entertainment has tabbed May 14 as the DVD release date for director John
Borowski’s award-winning docu-drama, Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and
Vengeance.

Back in 1928, while being
held for burglary in the Washington D.C. area, one of the prison guards (Henry
Lesser — portrayed by David Weiss) befriended inmate Carl (aka: Charles)
Panzram (portrayed by Tom Lodewyck), who agreed to put his life of crime to
paper.Some 40,000 words later the
portrait of a monster was painted in detail.

During his rambling
chronicle of seemingly endless crimes (burglaries, armed robberies, arson and
petty hustles) and numerous stints in prison (often brutalized) he also
confessed to raping and murdering 21 human beings, including several young boys.A number of the murders were confirmed …
others lost to the fog of time.

As a result, Panzram was
given what amounted to a life sentence at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary,
where he promptly killed a fellow prisoner and was subsequently hanged.

Borowski uses the time he
spent with Lesser to jump back and forth in time to show the progression of
Panzram’s criminal rage, mixing in reenactments of incidents detailed in
Panzram’s writings with vintage filmed interviews of individuals familiar with
the real-life monster.

The result is an
effective “horror” tale that is both riveting to watch (the documartary-like
approach certainly holds the viewer’s interest) and terrifying in a nightmarish
way; unique in its telling; mesmerizing.